In the beverage industry, it is common to process fruit in order to obtain extracted fruit juice and fruit pulp for use in a wide variety of beverages. The fruit juice can be drunk alone or can be combined with other ingredients. The extracted fruit pulp, also known as pulp slurry, is similarly desirable in that it can be combined with a juice base or added to fruit juice to further increase its fruit pulp content. In fact, there is an increasing demand for pulpy orange juice. Because fruit processing and beverage manufacturing facilities may not be located on the same premises, there is a need to ship extracted fruit pulp between locations.
Current fruit pulp shipping methods require the pulp slurry to be frozen during processing and maintained at sub-freezing temperatures during both transportation and storage. Typical fruit pulp extraction processes result in a pulp slurry product that can have as much as 90 wt % water content and, therefore, if not immediately used, the product must be frozen so that spoilage does not occur. There are two significant drawbacks to such extraction and freezing processes. First, there are substantial energy and monetary costs associated with shipping the significant water content in pulp slurry that, instead, could be supplied at the beverage manufacturing facility. Second, there are significant energy and monetary costs associated with maintaining pulp slurry in a frozen state during storage and transportation; a cost that increases with the time the pulp slurry is in storage and transit.
Cost and energy savings can be realized if the pulp slurry is dehydrated prior to shipping and subsequently rehydrated at the manufacturing facility when it is ready for use. A reduction in pulp slurry water content would not only reduce the weight per unit volume of pulp slurry being shipped, but it would also obviate the need to store and transport pulp slurry in a frozen state. Unfortunately, current methods for dehydrating pulp slurry result in a pulp slurry product that is undesirable to beverage consumers. Current dehydrating methods produce irreversible structural changes and/or chemical changes in pulp slurry such that the rehydrated pulp slurry does not retain the flavor, structural, and textual characteristics it had prior to undergoing dehydration. This result leads to a pulp slurry product that has a significantly reduced economic value. In particular, pulp slurry that has undergone dehydration is of such poor quality that it is generally used only as animal feed, fertilizer, and a source of food additives such as pectin.
The present invention provides a novel dehydrated pulp slurry and a novel process for making said dehydrated pulp slurry. The process of the present invention comprises a first de-sugaring step, wherein the sugars are removed from a pulp slurry, and a subsequent dehydrating step. The novel dehydrated pulp slurry produced by the process of the present invention is such that, when rehydrated, the color, taste, and texture of the dehydrated pulp slurry of the present invention is substantially the same as it was just prior to undergoing the dehydrating step.